21 July 2008

Those were the words of my best friend, Mike McNamee, the summer before Junior High. He has an older brother and sister so I figured him an expert in the matter. I played sports and was good at them, but my heart was in skateboarding and BMXing. So who am I? Luckily not long after that I discovered hard core music where you could wear running shoes, be fit and still be against the status quo. I was stoked.

Now 15 years later I still cannot very easily define myself through the events I do. When the girlfriend tells people I am triathlete I cringe. No way! I just happened to do them. Besides, I have bike handling skills and hate training. I'm also called a roadie, but I've been dropped in CatV races (explaining to the girlfriend why I am in the beginner category despite spending my life riding a bike is a whole other funny situation). Ultra-endurance cyclist? I've never done any of the RAAM qualifiers solo. Fixed gear freestyler? Yawn.

A photographer from Bicycling magazine was in our house the other day and he asked what kind of riding we do. 'Uhhhhhhh, commuting? And mountain biking. Single speed too. And some racing. And cross a bit. Double centuries? Yeah, we've all done a few. And I ride fixed.'

I am not going through any sort of existential crisis related to my upcoming 30th birthday, but merely going through the curiosity I have about why I do what I do. I have six bikes. Five of them are ridden regularly. I just love bike riding and am easily bored?

Some schedule updates:HooDoo 500 is not happening. Nicolas is injured, Brian is poor and Jack(the one who's front wheel flies off) is track racing.

6 comments:

It also puzzles me when I think that I was once pretty fast on a BMX bike, have been riding bikes my entire life ride road nearly every day, an yet I got dropped pretty fast in my last cat 5 race. Maybe it was the altitude...that's what I keep telling myself.

xlnt post my friend; reminded me of getting yelled at by my high school football coach for ollieing my teammates in the parking lot wearing all of our gear.. "you can't be a skater AND a quarterback," he screams ..yeah right; the extra laps he made me(and the entire team) run just made me a better sk8r.